Sub not staying on

[Noek]

Hi,

I am having an issue regarding my subwoofer not staying on and am confused why it began doing this because I haven't changed anything.

My speakers are definitive (sub included) and it is a 5.1. My receiver is a Pioneer Elite vsx-50.

It was working perfectly fine up until about a week ago I noticed the sub as not working. I went through the speaker setup process again in my receiver manual and it found the sub and everything worked fine for about 5 minutes, then the sub stopped working again. The power light is on so I know it is getting power and I recently changed the sub cable thinking that may be it.

Now when I go through the speaker setup process and it cycles through each speaker channel, I can hear the sub engaging fine but when I finish the speaker setup and return to either a tv, dvd, or apple tv signal, the sub is not engaging. In the speaker settings the sub is set to ON, so i am out of ideas.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Adam]

Welcome to the forum, Noek!

The statement that you haven't changed anything is what has me really wondering, as there are a few things that typically are the cause - but those are due to set up. I'll mention them anyway, as perhaps someone changed a setting on accident.

If there isn't a lot of low frequency content, and your other speakers are set to large, then the sub might not get much signal. MCACC seems to set speakers to "large" even when they are really aren't, so make sure the speaker sizes are what you want (especially because you just went through that setup again).

If the output level from the receiver to the subwoofer is pretty low (e.g. "-5 dB"), then there might not be enough signal to trigger the auto-on feature on a sub. If your sub is set to turn on and off automatically, try setting it to be always on to check if that's the reason. If it is, then you can lower the volume setting on the subwoofer itself (to lower the gain on the sub's internal amp) and rerun MCACC. This will result in a higher signal level going to the sub to get the same output with a lower gain on the subwoofer's amp.

You already swapped out the cable, which can be a cause. The connections at the ends of a cable can get loose over time, resulting in intermittent loss of signal.

That's what comes to mind right now.

[Noek]

Thank you for the quick reply. I am using tower speakers in the front so I think they were set to large but i will set them to small and see if that changes anything.

[Noek]

setting the speakers to small did the trick. Not sure how that got changed.

Thank you very much.

[Adam]

Glad that it worked! You can always play around with the settings to see which you like the best. The sub might not play all of the time with the towers set to large, but having the towers handle the lower frequencies might sound better to you...or not.

[Noek]

I am just glad that it was me and not the subwoofer. It was driving me crazy thinking that my sub went out when it was so new. The Magnolia people told me that my amp probably was bad, so I am glad that I decided to come on here and ask. Thanks again.

[LAB3]

Way to Go Adam... it's cool when you can help someone, as these AVR can really give you a head ache sometimes.